"I know now, I shall see him again."
Daphne was silent.
"I hoped it, but I couldn't be certain. That was so awful. Now—I am certain."
"Since you became a Catholic?"
She made a sign of assent.
"I couldn't be uncertain—I couldn't!" she added with fervour, looking strangely at Daphne. And Daphne understood that no voice less positive or self-confident than that of Catholicism, no religion less well provided with tangible rites and practices, could have lifted from the spirit the burden of that remorse which had yet killed the body.
A little later Madeleine drew her down again.
"I couldn't talk, Daphne—I was afraid; but I've written to you, just bit by bit, as I had strength. Oh, Daphne——!"
Then voice and strength failed her. Her eyes piteously followed her friend for a little, and then closed.
She lingered through the day; and at night when the June starlight was on the gorge, she passed away, with the voice of the Falls in her dying ears. A tragic beauty—"beauty born of murmuring sound—had passed into her face;" and that great plunge of many waters, which had been to her in life the symbol of anguish and guilt, had become in some mysterious way the comforter of her pain, the friend of her last sleep.